There is a color blue that I know, only because of my mother.

I had heard of broken hearts before. Saw the Disney versions on Sunday nights in living color. I wasn’t allowed to sit too close to the television, in the fear that it would ruin my eyes. But when I watched my mother’s heart break, I forgot the warnings, and pulled myself in, up so close, so personal, my heart telling my eyes, you have to see her.

We moved from our house on Van Dyke Road. Apartment to apartment. In this seemingly endless winter, I could hear her heart snapping, like the leafless limbs on frozen trees. With every painful crack, we moved. Searching. Each nest smaller. Sharp, inexpensive twigs. I stayed nestled in. In front. Beside. It was where I could feel the hope. See the “just maybe.” And time to time I would hear it, in a whisper, glancing out the apartment window, even at the garden level she would press our faces to the glass, and as the shoes hustled by on the sidewalk she would force a smile and say, “Aaah, but the view!” My eyes squinted, not from the pain, but the laughter. I would never again worry about getting in too close.

I can’t remember how long the winter lasted. Was it years? Then I saw her in front of the window on Jefferson Street. Sitting next to the stereo. Replaying the record by Shirley Bassey. She feverishly wrote down the words, “I wish you bluebirds in the spring, to give your heart a song to sing and then a kiss, but more than this, I wish you love.” Was she writing to him? To her heart? I wasn’t sure, but I knew one thing, spring had arrived, in the most glorious shade of blue.